This year, we responded to the invitation of the Open Houses Festival organisers by guiding visitors through two of our latest works, the Stora Enso Pavilion in Planica on Saturday 15.04.2023 and the production plant in Ribnica on Sunday 16.04.2023. Despite the fact that both locations are about an hour or more away from the Slovenian capital and therefore relatively far from the main action of the festival, we were happy to conduct the guided tours of the buildings, as we are aware of the importance of promoting quality architecture in geographically less accessible parts of our country.
Both days were accompanied by sour and cold April weather, with a relatively thin blanket of snow even falling in Planica last week. Nevertheless, the visitors attended the tours in good spirits and with great interest, with a smaller number in Planica and a much larger number in Ribnica.
Open Houses, with the joint selfless commitment of the organisers, volunteers and authors of the architectural works, give the general public a free insight into the often inaccessible interior spaces of the individual works, accompanied by a narrative of the origins, challenges, pitfalls and triumphs of each individual building. Unlike observing and admiring quality architecture through specially selected photographs, direct contact with the space, the building and its authors always reveals details and features that photographs cannot really reveal. At the same time, for us architects, a guided tour of the building is a beautiful opportunity to walk through the past processes of its design and construction in memory and narrative. A photographic image cannot reveal years of hard work, which is not only full of successes, but also many “mistakes”, which the architect’s narrative contextualises and thus gives it a special, unique character for the time and place.
Open Houses are therefore our hope that the quality of architecture is not only presented through flashy images, but above all through authentic experiences. We would like to thank all visitors for their interest and hope that you enjoyed your visit and learned something new and unusual.
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